"Whew," the Rangers' captain said with a grin after his team's 3-2 shootout loss to the Devils. "I want to go home."

In the final game of the regular season, in a game the Rangers were trying to win in regulation time to secure home ice advantage in the opening round of the playoffs, Jagr was double-shifted from the second period on and his goal at 4:46 of the third period gave the Rangers a chance to win the game.

The goal was Jagr's 25th of the season, the lowest total of his 18-year career. But he has closed with a flourish, scoring seven of those goals in the season's final eight games, and appears to be playing his best hockey as the playoffs approach.

"It's great," Rangers goaltender Henrik Lundqvist said of Jagr's late surge. "He adds another level to this team. And it's going to be important for us. Definitely, to have our top players playing their best, there's no question. And when he plays like this... he can definitely be the difference in a tight game.

"Usually, players like Jagr, or (Chris) Drury, or Shanny (Brendan Shanahan), they're usually the difference in a tight game," Lundqvist continued. "They can do something you don't expect. Especially against this (Devils) team -- they don't give up that much, so you have to have a couple guys that can do something special."

Jagr can certainly do that. And despite his low scoring totals -- his 71 points mean he doesn't meet the 84-point standard he needed to have his contract extended for another year -- Rangers coach Tom Renney said Jagr has played well all season, and not just recently.

"He's been able to score," Renney said when asked about Jagr's late season success. "That's the result of what he's always been trying to do for us. We have to be careful about how we equate his performance when it comes to whether or not he's on the scoreboard. We need him to score. And we need others to score, too... to get that balanced attack. He's played well for a long time and hasn't been recognized for that and I think we have to appreciate that."

Jagr himself downplayed any improvement in his game down the stretch.

"There's nothing different," he said of his play. "Maybe I had more chances than I had the first half (of the season). But nothing special. I probably shoot the puck a little more."

For much of the season, Jagr never was able to seem truly comfortable or happy, leading to the obvious speculation that, as a free agent this summer, he might walk away from the Rangers -- to play in Europe or somewhere else in the NHL (a return to Pittsburgh, perhaps?). But no one knows what a big playoffs could mean as far as the prospects of a return to the Rangers.

Yesterday, the Devils again went away from their strategy of past years of having Jay Pandolfo shadowing Jagr, and instead tried to have Dainius Zubrus out whenever Jagr was on the ice. That meant that when Jagr was with his regular linemates, Martin Straka and Brandon Dubinsky, the Devils had their third line of Zubrus, Mike Rupp and David Clarkson on the ice, and when Jagr double-shifted with Sean Gomez and Sean Avery, Zubrus came out with Pandolfo and John Madden.

Whatever kind of head games and line-matching gymnastics the teams play with each other over the next two weeks, the one thing the Rangers don't want to see is what happened the last time the teams faced each other in the playoffs two years ago. In that series, Jagr was a non-factor after he dislocated his left shoulder in a foolish attempt to cheapshot Gomez, of all people.